


A Place to Belong

by ysande



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:10:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ysande/pseuds/ysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Porthos' earliest memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place to Belong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timescape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timescape/gifts).



It's not his earliest memory but it's the one that's clearest.

He's five years old. The sun is bright but the air is crisp. His bare feet are cold on the smooth wooden floors. The master of the house is standing before him, towering and stooping all at once. 

'Be off with you now,' the master is saying. 'Shoo, shoo!'

Porthos is scared. He's typically a fearless, sunny-natured child, but today his stomach is twisting and falling, and his heart is racing even though he's not doing anything hard, he's just standing there in front of the master, just listening. He's listening as hard as he can, but he doesn't understand.

'Where is maman?' he asks. 'I want maman.'

She would have walloped him for that, his maman, a big smack that was all noise and no hurt to remind him that he was to call the master, ‘m’Lord’.

'Your ma's gone, boy,' says the master. 'She's gone and she's not coming back.'

Porthos' mouth twists unhappily. He knows his maman comes and goes for days at a time sometimes, but she'd never not come back. She'd never not come back for HIM.

'I'll wait,' Porthos says, determined. 'I want to wait for my maman.'

The master laughs. The sound makes Porthos' skin crinkle. 'Waiting will do you no good, boy. You're to leave today.'

Porthos feels like he did the time he'd fallen into the river. There's nothing solid left in the world. There's no up or down or forwards or backwards. He's tumbling in every direction all at once but he pulls his face into the fiercest scowl he can manage.

‘I ain’t scared of you,’ he declares. ‘I ain’t scared of going.’

All the same, and even though he’s taller than Jean, who is six, and Amie, who is seven, he feels very small as he walks to the door. He hadn’t considered that someone might help him - he knows his place well enough - but his stomach tumbles and drops when the maids turn their heads and the men look away. At the door, he pauses and half reaches out a hand to Cook, who has always been kind to him, and who he secretly hopes might be kind once more. But Cook does not move. Her face is scrunched into ugliness and her hands knot uselessly in her apron.

Porthos’ last memory of the house is of the Mistress staring at him from the window as he leaves. He doesn’t think he’s ever been in her presence before, but she looks at him with such fury and such wild hatred that he shudders and hurries quickly away.

He never can tell whether he’s imagined this last part, but in his memory, her voice chases cruelly after him. ‘Be off with you - there's no place for you here, and there never was.’

\---

Three days later, Porthos is huddled in a dirty doorway on an unfamiliar street, unashamedly bawling his heartbreak and his fear. The wind had turned icy and he doesn’t have a coat. His back and bottom smart from where the merchant’s switch had caught him, and the two apples he’s managed to pilfer are sour and green. Worst of all, he misses his maman, and he’s never been so alone in all his life.

’So,’ a boy’s voice says above him, ‘you’re the one who’s brave enough to steal apples from old Baynard.’

‘Brave, or stupid,’ a girl says tartly.

Porthos looks up and scrubs the tears from his cheeks. Looking down at him is a boy of eight or nine, dark skinned and dark haired, with sharp eyes and a wicked grin. With him is a girl, maybe a year or two younger, with bright hair and big eyes in a pointed face.

’…was hungry,’ Porthos mumbles, because he can sense that they’re laughing at him, and there are two of them and only one of him.

The girl’s face softens. ‘Don’t you got no-one to care for you?’ she asks.

Porthos bites down on his lip and manages to shake his head without any fresh tears welling up. All of a sudden, the girl looks kind. ‘We got food, Charon and me,’ she says. ‘You come along with us.’

‘Flea, if you had your way, we’d be adopting every stray cat and dog and kid we ever came across,’ Charon says, exasperated but amused. ‘This one’s too little, and he’s too new. He cain’t steal, he cain’t fight, and he don’t even have the sense to stay away from old Baynard’s apples.’

‘I can too fight!’ says Porthos hotly, jumping to his feet. He always got a great walloping from maman for fighting, but it was much better to be whipped by his maman than to be whipped by the steward’s son.

‘You willing to prove that?’ Charon challenges. ‘A little thing like you?’

Porthos replies by letting out a yell and charging at the older boy, who looks startled before letting fly with his own fists and feet. Porthos is quick and strong for his age, but Charon is three or four years older with the experience to match, and it shows. The two of them wrestle in the dusty street, landing blows where they can until Flea’s shrill command cuts across their fight. 

‘Shame on you!’ Flea says sternly to Charon, who is grinning broadly and unrepentantly even though his mouth is bleeding. ‘Pick on someone your own size, won’t you?’

‘I won’t have a chance when he’s my size,’ Charon says, laughing and looking at Porthos with approval. ‘You were right, Flea, we could use someone like him!’

Flea sniffs and tosses her pretty blonde head. ‘But he doesn’t have a lick of sense in him,’ she says, speaking to Charon but looking at Porthos. ‘I suppose you’re still hungry?’

Porthos nods, wide-eyed.

‘Come along then,’ Flea says, and offers him a slim, pale hand. Porthos thinks that she’s the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, and the nicest. ‘Charon nicked a whole chicken pie this morning, right under the nose of the baker,’ she says with pride. 

Porthos, whose bottom is still smarting from the fruit-seller’s switch, looks at Charon with awe.

Charon grins at him. ‘If you can learn to steal like you’ve learnt to fight, we’ll be eating like kings in no time!’

‘I can,’ vows Porthos confidently, suddenly wanting nothing more than to have Flea speaking about _him_ with pride, and Charon to look at _him_ with awe. ‘I will.’

Charon ruffles his hair, and Flea beams at him.

‘What’s your name?’ Flea asks, as the three of them set off together.

‘Porthos,’ he answers.

‘Porthos, you’re going to fit right in,’ declares Charon, and Porthos feels the cold, twisting loneliness in his tummy fade so that it’s almost, almost gone.


End file.
